U.S. has few short-term plays to make on Egypt
By: Leigh Munsil August 15, 2013 04:44 PM EDT

Instability in Egypt won’t be solved by strong condemnations from Washington, a former U.S. ambassador to the Middle East said Thursday. In fact, there may not be much of anything the U.S. can do in the short term.

While the U.S. needs to look out for its own interests, watchers of Cairo’s brutal crackdown on protesters are missing the point if they try to apply American principles to this Middle Eastern conflict, said Adam Ereli, a former ambassador to Bahrain and the State Department’s former deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

“The essential issue here is, how do governments deal with dissent?” Ereli told POLITICO. “This isn’t a chess match. This is a death struggle. These guys are playing for keeps. It’s not like an intellectual exercise where you reflect on it and take action; these guys are fighting for their survival. Both sides, the Muslim Brothers and the Egyptians and the military.”

Compromise and dialogue are highly unlikely, he said, because a government can’t allow mobs to hold it hostage and dictate the terms of Egypt’s future.

“Any government that agrees to that is going to lose its credibility and its right to rule tomorrow,” Ereli said. “You’re never going to get the opposition and the government to sit down for talks. Ever. It is a fight to the finish, and the winner is the last man standing.”

President Barack Obama on Thursday criticized Egypt’s interim government for violence that’s killed hundreds and wounded thousands, announcing the U.S. would not participate in the regular Bright Star military exercise that was scheduled for next month.

“The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt’s interim government and security forces,” Obama said. “We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom, or that might makes right.”

Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters later Thursday at the Pentagon that Hagel and al-Sisi had spoken “at length a short while ago about this and other matters. Canceling this exercise was a prudent step, we believe, to signal the United States’ strong objection to recent events including violence against civilians and we strongly encourage the government of Egypt move toward a political transition that emphasizes inclusivity, that emphasizes freedom of assembly and to take steps to restrain from violence.”

Ereli, who was ambassador to the small Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain from 2007 to 2011 and watched that country go through its own upheaval, said that rulers in countries like Egypt have just as much at stake as the opposition, making for a “very volatile and explosive situation.”

In Bahrain, an uprising in 2011 shut down the country’s financial sector and blocked off tourism. Demonstrations clogged the streets until the government declared martial law and cleared the protesters in brutal fashion. There are a lot of similarities between the conflict in Bahrain and those in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, Ereli said.

“Was it ugly? Yes. Were there abuses? Obviously. You can’t not have that kind of paramilitary operation without abuses,” Ereli explained. “But was there any other alternative? I don’t think so. Same with Egypt, same with Syria.”

Though the Bahraini government is more moderate than Egypt’s and was more likely to make concessions, for such countries negotiating at gunpoint is simply not an option, he said.

“That sounds like a pretty bleak assessment. So how do we break out of the cycle of violence?” Ereli asked. “I would argue that it’s a generational thing. That, basically, if you look at the rulers in the Arab world, they have all either been in power or are products of the system that was in power … that began in the ’50s. Their expiration date is probably not for another 10 years.”

It will simply take time for younger, more moderate groups to achieve political power and influence in Middle Eastern countries, he added.

But the problem, Ereli argued, is that today, U.S. influence in places like Bahrain and Egypt is at an all-time low, making it difficult to work with their governments to resolve conflicts.

“We tried to stake out a middle ground in this, in the face of this unrest and change sweeping the region. We’ve tried to be balanced. Don’t take sides, don’t interfere. Don’t be the big American bully telling people what to do. Give them space to work out their problems,” he said.

That mentality makes sense to Americans, but it doesn’t give the U.S. any bargaining power in the region because it makes both sides feel like they don’t have support, he said.

“If you’re the leaders, you’re like ‘Hey, what happened to my ally? What happened to the country that said they were my friend? What happened to the United States that said, ‘We’ll support you, we’ll be with you through thick and thin?’

Continued Ereli: “The answer is, when Obama tells [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak to leave, you don’t think that sends a shiver down the spine of every leader in the region? It’s like, wait a minute. Egypt is America’s closest Arab ally, the recipient of a billion dollars a year in foreign aid. And you throw this guy under a bus, just because of a bunch of people in Tahrir Square? What the hell is that?”

It hurt U.S. credibility with Middle Eastern leaders, Ereli said.

“So there goes a big piece of influence that we have with any leader in the region, which we’re going to need when we need to ask them favors or give them advice or make requests,” he said. “As a diplomat this is something that I find very disturbing, but I understand the political and domestic realities.”

But for those who bemoan the decline of American influence, Ereli said to bear something in mind: “Once you’ve gotten to the point where you have to use force, you’ve exhausted all other means, which means you’ve kind of failed.”

Given time, regions like Egypt can and will change, Ereli predicted.

“This is an evolution process that is going to take decades to play out,” he said. “When I see what’s happening in Egypt today, my hair’s not on fire. It’s horrible, it’s emotional, it’s all that stuff, but it’s going to be a long process, and there are going to be more events like today.”

The stakes are high for the United States, he said, but that’s nothing compared to what the uprising means to Egyptians.

“What we see in Egypt and Bahrain should remind us that it doesn’t always work to apply American ideas of democracy to countries that have completely different histories and completely different ways of approaching political dialogue and engagement,” Ereli said. “There’s a lot more at stake for the people of Egypt in this.”